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“Everything about this smells of a cheap TV movie,” states a cynical podcaster during the chilling follow-up Influencers. In the moment, his tone is manipulatively dismissive toward an interviewee whose outlandish story he once claimed he believed. Yet his assessment of what’s happening on screen isn’t wrong. Superficially, a pair of films on demand chronicling a young woman who worms her way into the lives of social media stars before killing them seems like a modern-day version of a lurid but cable-ready Movie of the Week. The surprising aspect about Influencers is how much better it is than plenty of its competition, regardless of where you watch it. It’s the kind of suspense film that should give its peers a bad case of FOMO.

Revisiting the Original and Setting the Stage

The 2022 film Influencer follows the mysterious CW (Cassandra Naud) as she quietly chooses traveling alone influencer targets, lures them to their doom, and covers up those murders (at least temporarily) by taking control of their online accounts. The movie concludes (spoiler ahead) with CW stranded on an uninhabited island off the coast of Thailand, after her latest target, Madison (Emily Tennant), reverses their roles against her.

This provides the 2025 Influencers some early ambiguity, when returning filmmaker Kurtis David Harder resumes with the character CW happily living alongside her partner Diane (Lisa Delamar) in Paris. During a trip to celebrate their first anniversary, British influencer Charlotte (Georgina Campbell) draws CW’s eye and ire.

CW comments to Diane that someone ought to attempt leaving a phone-addicted online personality somewhere with no technology to see whether they can make it. Is this an origin-story prequel? Did CW become extremist by seeing the special treatment afforded a single fame-seeker?

Evolving Viewpoints and Global Pursuits

The story’s perspective changes multiple times, ultimately revealing those introductory moments' place in the timeline. The story revisits Madison, who has been exonerated for committing CW’s crimes, but still faces suspicion regarding her version of the events, which includes the killing of her boyfriend. The film also follows Jacob (Jonathan Whitesell), living in Bali attempting to boost his profile as half of a right-wing-influencer duo with Ariana (Veronica Long), though his preferred medium involves masculine-focused livestreams, as opposed to the Instagram photos that typically attract CW's interest.

Naud remains immensely captivating in her role, a role that appears especially custom-fit to her strengths. (She even created CW's eye-catching outfits.) Although the sequel’s screentime balance tips heavily toward CW — the original felt more equally divided between her and Madison — it still works as a story of dueling amateur detectives, with both women employ fake accounts, social media surveillance, and a seemingly unlimited travel budget to chase or evade one another. Then again, maybe the unlimited budget isn’t necessary. Online personalities possess a talent for getting to explore luxurious locales at little cost, a skill that CW echoes with her more overt scheming.

Ingenious Filmmaking and Cinematic Travelogue

The filmmakers behind Influencers seem similarly ingenious in locating stunning locations to film, although they were likely more legitimate about it. Most of the film appears to be shot on location, providing it a real-world weight that remains even as numerous sequences consist of a relatively small cast of characters staring at digital devices.

It follows the same logic that made the Bond franchise look so persistently lavish over the years: Yes, explosive action and special effects can display large spending, however simply offering a travelogue of sorts to viewers also seems inherently cinematic. It’s also especially fitting for a story so dependent on the coexisting surface-level allure and try-hard grind of creating envy-inducing digital content.

Every character in Bali, like those staying in Thailand in the original, appear to enjoy access to impossibly chic contemporary villas; films exist concerning beach rescuers which don't feature as much aerial pool video. These individuals must believably inhabit these luxurious, far-flung locations to emphasize the uneasy irony of how frequently everyone — including the woman wreaking vengeance upon the online stars' self-centered phoniness — nonetheless spends plenty of time under the light of their screens.

Nuanced Portrayals and Digital-Age Suspense

At the same time, Harder hasn’t authored a rant targeting the vacuousness of online fame. Though it can be gratifying to watch CW exploit different internet celebrities, and a Hitchcockian sense of alignment lets us to wish she doesn’t get caught, Harder is somewhat understanding of the key influencer figures. In the first movie, he tapped into the isolation Madison experienced while on supposedly dream getaways. In this film, Harder seems to trust that merely watching Jacob at work will reveal that he is selling false masculinity to other doofuses; he avoids turning into a caricature the character. He even gives Jacob a degree of respect by showing his true devotion to his girlfriend; he is two-faced, yet Ariana is a partner in his double standards, not someone exploited of it.

The other side of Harder’s even-keeled presentation means it can sometimes appear as if he’s nodding at elements of contemporary digital culture without investigating them further. This is particularly evident regarding how he introduces artificial intelligence into the story, a fascinating turn that lacks the psychosexual kick it should have. The pluralized title of Influencers could offer fans of the first movie expectations of a larger-scale ante-upping, and the movie ultimately delivers exactly that, with a suitably chaotic climax. But before that, it resembles more a polished Hitchcock thriller than a frenzied, tech-addled Brian De Palma thriller. Influencers’ heavy use of actual places might also be what keeps it from coming across like utter horror. Our society might be saturated with always-online creators, digital deception, and exploitative travel, but reality itself remains present, at least for now.